Pointe Blank is a collection of original images inspired by the story of Coppélia. In a first-of-its-kind collaborative project for Birmingham Royal Ballet, 27 artists and designers have been invited to produce individual pieces of artwork based upon the tale of toymaker Doctor Coppélius, and his attempts to breathe life into his most prized creation.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a rather exciting personal project with Rob Lindsay from Birmingham Royal Ballet. Rob got in contact at the end of April to discuss a collaborative design project he’d been thinking about, so over a good cup of tea we sparked off some ideas. Often people decide a show isn't for them as soon as they read the third word of 'Birmingham Royal Ballet presents...' But sometimes people will take a chance if they already know the plot of the piece. They're not actually coming for the dancing, they're coming for the story. Rob wanted to reach the ballet out to a wider audience, collaborating with other creatives to design something around their recent production, Coppélia. Birmingham Royal Ballet were 100% supportive.

"The appeal of Coppélia for such a project was that it’s got a lively and colourful story, but one that’s not already been told in hundreds of different ways, like Cinderella or The Sleeping Beauty. Even as a ballet, it’s not quite crossed over into the public consciousness in the same way that The Nutcracker or Swan Lake has. So it meant – or at least I’d hope that it meant – that the artists could interpret the story with very few visual preconceptions." - Rob Lindsay, Birmingham Royal Ballet

After a few meetings we’d cracked a concept and entitled our project Pointe Blank. I put together a list of artists and designers I admired or had previously worked with and we wrote the brief. We explored options for a physical exhibition too, an opportunity to bring the creatives together, as opposed to an online presence only. The brief given to the contributors did not require them to present Coppélia as a ballet, only that ideally, they include some reference to Birmingham Royal Ballet. Production images were available, but not initially provided in an attempt to keep the brief as unprescriptive as possible.

We launched the collection at the Hippodrome on Monday 13th June to the artists and invited guests. It was a great evening with my friend Nat tickling the ivories and Lewis being our photographer. David Bintley, the director of Birmingham Royal Ballet did a speech too – it was great to hear his genuine support and excitement over our project. We also launched the collection online that evening and received over 2000 views on the Tuesday alone!

www.pointeblank.co.uk

Artwork shown above from Substrakt's Ryan and Claire :)

K4 Architects is a recently established architecture practice newly based just a stones-throw from our Birmingham studio on Fazeley Street. They came to us looking for a new web site to mark the new chapter of their business.

Websites for architects run the gamut from great to poor. They have in the past been dogged with an expectation of hard-to-use form-over-function inaccessible Flash offerings.

The trend for obscure menu systems, dreadful copy and pixel fonts can safely be left behind, but such sites often used beautiful large / full screen background images and custom typefaces - great for showing off the company portfolio. Whilst these only really benefitted the large-screened desktop they often  responded to browser sizes (up to a point) better than their HTML-based counterparts. (remember sizeListener.onresize = function() {};Stage.addListener(sizeListener); ?)

We wanted to select the best parts of this status quo and, at the same time, add our own modern take.

Welcome, Responsive Web Design ¶

Image credit: Smashing Magazine

Just over a year ago, Ethan Marcotte published an article on A List Apart on 'Responsive Web Design'. The article draws similarities from Responsive Architecture, a class of architecture or building that demonstrates an ability to alter its form, to continually reflect the environmental conditions that surround it. He observes -

Recently, an emergent discipline called “responsive architecture” has begun asking how physical spaces can respond to the presence of people passing through them. Through a combination of embedded robotics and tensile materials, architects are experimenting with art installations and wall structures that bend, flex, and expand as crowds approach them. Motion sensors can be paired with climate control systems to adjust a room’s temperature and ambient lighting as it fills with people. Companies have already produced “smart glass technology” that can automatically become opaque when a room’s occupants reach a certain density threshold, giving them an additional layer of privacy.

Since then it has become a hot topic, and has forced web-designers to think differently when designing a site. He continues,

In recent years, I’ve been meeting with more companies that request “an iPhone website” as part of their project. It’s an interesting phrase: At face value, of course, it speaks to mobile WebKit’s quality as a browser, as well as a powerful business case for thinking beyond the desktop....But what’s next? An iPad website? An N90 website? Can we really continue to commit to supporting each new user agent with its own bespoke experience? At some point, this starts to feel like a zero sum game. But how can we—and our designs—adapt?

Media Queries ¶

We used a selection of CSS Media queries to detect different browser sizes and capabilities and morph the pages to best suit the situation. This way we avoid creating separate user-agent specific, and an intelligent system that creates a 'one size fits all'.

A matter of style ¶

K4 showed us a copy of Process; A Tomato Project. The book details the abstract of Tomato's concepts, memories and approaches to work in layers of abstract photographs and layered transparency. We used these styles to inform the site's look and feel, using rgba transparencies (degrading gracefully for non css3 browsers of course) and background overlays to build up layers of depth.

Launch Event Invites ¶

As well as the site we designed some great invites to send to VIPs for their launch event. These minimal invites featured metallic embossed foil in the same accent colour as the site on 540gsm Pristine white Colorplan.

View the site: k4architects.com

Over the last 12 months, Substrakt has noticed a very positive trend in the West Midlands - organisations learning the value of digital data and using it to empower and encourage local people to make the most of the places and spaces around them. Our most recent completed work, the Radiu5 Project, is a great example of how this can work really well as a collaborative and engaging initiative for young people in particular.

Radiu5 is the brainchild of Sampad, a dynamic development agency for South Asian arts based in Birmingham. It has a particular focus on youth arts projects, encouraging young people to grow their skills and experience and further them whilst taking part in cultural education opportunities. Radiu5, a key Sampad project for 2011, saw volunteers collecting digital data which highlighted the creative and arts opportunities available within a five mile radius of mac Birmingham for young people, with the intention of inspiring wider involvement and creating a lasting online archive.

Substrakt's job was to design and build a digital way of showing the data that the young volunteers had collected.

From the start, the project was fun and hectic to work on for all the team. The 30 young adult volunteers had some fantastic ideas of groups of information they wanted to collect, from Birmingham's graffiti art, venues for band rehearsals and affordable places for groups of friends to meet. We worked with them in groups, helping them decide on how they wanted to see this material come together, and importantly, how it can be connected to create an overall story. The Substrakt team coached the volunteers in data collection methods and upload techniques, subject matter brainstorms and feedback sessions at every stage of the design process.

Front-end interaction with the exhibition was via a touchscreen which in turn powered a matrix of large displays. We had to think carefully about using animations that responded to touch, avoiding 'hover' effects. The specification of the displays was still an unknown at the time of design, so we opted to design an interface that intelligently scaled to the dimensions of any given display. This way users were able to play using any type of device. The data points bubbled up on the left of the installation, changing in radius depending on the popularity of the tagged content. Navigating through the bubbles brought similar 'linked' data points into view. Any content (images, video, audio, editorial) that related to the data points then appeared on the right. Content that was geotagged was displayed on a minimap. The whole interface was powered via jQuery & Ajax in order to maintain a smooth immersive experience, avoiding the need for jerky page refreshes.

We focused on ensuring that each visitor got a unique experience from playing with the visualistion, finding data that took them on an informative storytelling journey.

Substrakt trained the volunteer teams to guide young users around the exhibition and encourage users to upload new content of their own. The visualisation was also made available as a website for future use, with the project ending in May 2011.